domingo, 2 de janeiro de 2011

Modern physics, despite its complexity and the fact that relativity and quantum mechanics seem to defy common sense and are incomprehensible to laymen, has proven fairly good at predicting new phenomena and in aiding the development of such technologies as nuclear power (and weapons), lasers, and transistors. Yet there are problems with the current paradigm, the so-called “standard model,” and these problems seem to be getting worse. The tower of modern physics rests on two ill-matched pillars: relativity and quantum mechanics. Since the time of Einstein physicists have tried to reconcile these two into one grand unified theory, or GUT. Most recently, physicists have come up with string theory, incomprehensible even to many physicists, and then have modified it into membrane theory. String theory and its variant, unfortunately, cannot be either proven or disproven. The basic problem is that physicists recognize four fundamental forces in nature, forces capable of attraction and repulsion at a distance: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. Intuitively, it would seem that these four should be closely related, perhaps variants on a common theme. But no, relativity explains gravity as a bending of space-time caused by mass, and the other three forces as “virtual” particles emitted and absorbed by protons, electrons, and so on. In an effort to prove one theory or another, physicists, at great expense to the taxpayers, have constructed ever more powerful particle accelerators, imagining that they will soon reach some final truth. But, over and over, their experiments provide, not answers, but merely more questions, more mysteries, and more problems.

Some believe that in the mid nineteenth century we were well on our way to a true grand unified theory that would give us a more or less complete understanding of physical processes and perhaps lead to such technologies as gravity control and “free” energy. Building on the work of such predecessors as Gauss, Faraday, and Ampere, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, in 1861 and 1862 developed a series of equations to explain electric charges, currents, and fields. Originally he used something called quaternion algebra, but after Maxwell died, Oliver Heaviside and some other researchers took it upon themselves to simplify them into only four partial differential equations, easier for most scientists to understand. But a great many researchers believe that, although the equations in their current form seem highly effective, something was lost in this “translation,” and it may not have been entirely accidental.

During this period, physicists hypothesized that all of space was filled with a mysterious substance, not ordinary matter, called the “ether” or the “luminiferous ether.” “Luminiferous” simply means “light bearing,” and it was believed to transmit electromagnetic radiation, including the visible spectrum, in a manner analogous to the way solid matter conducts sound waves. It was further speculated that it might also somehow carry the forces of gravity and electromagnetism (the strong and weak nuclear forces had not yet been discovered). In 1887 two American physicists, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, decided to try to measure the speed and direction of Earth’s movement through the ether, which would constitute a universal, fixed frame of reference…motion was assumed to be, not merely relative, but absolute.

They constructed a device called an interferometer using a light source and half-silvered mirrors that would allow them to separate a light beam and send half at right angles to the other half, and then recombine them. The Earth’s motion through the ether would therefore cause an interference pattern. When, despite repeated experiments at different times of the day and year, no such pattern could be found, Michelson and Morley and many other physicists assumed that either the device was not precise enough or that the ether behaved in a manner different than predicted. They did not feel that they had disproven its existence, and, indeed, as late as 1904 the Dutch theoretician Hendrik Lorentz, suggested, according to Paul La Violette in Genesis of the Cosmos, that subatomic particles might be “resilient wavelike excitations in the ether itself.” In 1913 the French physicist Georges Sagnac used an interferometer on a turntable, and found an interference shift indicating that, contrary to what the Michelson-Morley experiment had indicated, the Earth was moving through an ether. In 1987 Ernest Silvertooth demonstrated that the wavelength of light varies when the light moves in different directions, again indicating that the Earth was moving through a light bearing ether of some sort.

Yet, despite all of this, by the early nineteen hundreds, it became the accepted consensus among most physicists that the ether simply did not exist, and a totally new approach was necessary to understand the basic principles governing the physical universe. Enter Albert Einstein with his special and general theories of relativity. Einstein asserted that all motion was relative, and that there is no fixed frame of reference. But he also claimed that gravity is caused by a warping of space-time. Since nothingness, by definition, cannot bend, this would mean that space must be some kind of a substance or have some kind of structure…in other words, an ether. So relative motion and the denial of any possibility of absolute motion requires the nonexistence of an ether, but space-time bending requires an ether. Houston, we have a problem. But the physics community was undeterred by all of this, and Einstein was portrayed as an humble, even saintly man, and as the greatest genius since Newton. To this day there are questions regarding a supposed early “proof” of his theory carried out by his ardent supporters and showing that the Sun’s gravity bends starlight. Yet all later tests seem to verify his theories, save for one small problem. Paul La Violette and some other physicists believe that all the phenomena that supposedly prove relativity can be explained either by classical physics, including the “angular advance of the long axis of Mercury’s elliptical orbit,” or by such alternative models as sub quantum kinetics, a GUT devised by La Violette and several other alternative thinkers. In fact, many of the things Einstein predicted, like the shortening of objects in the direction of motion at relativistic (near light speed) velocities, and even mass-energy equivalence (leading to Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2) were predicted by earlier scientists.

Relativity theory demands that the universe must either be expanding or contracting, and the red shift of light from distant galaxies, discovered by Hubble and other astronomers, supposedly proves that it is expanding, although Hubble himself made no such claim. In general, the further away an object is, the greater is its redshift, which could be caused by the object’s receding from us at a high velocity. But here, too, there are problems. Some stars appear to be older than the predicted age of the universe dating from the “Big Bang.” Yet nothing is supposed to have existed before then; time itself is believed to have begun at that instant, so there could be, by definition, no “before.” Alternatively expanding and contracting universe theories are no help, since their periodic collapses would destroy everything. Some galaxies, judging by their redshift, were fully formed when the universe was only 160 million years old, but no conceivable model of star and galaxy formation allows for this…there simply was not enough time. One galaxy, only a billion years old according to its redshift, has stars that are twenty billion years old (bear in mind that these ages represent the time the galaxy’s light began its long voyage toward us, and it would be much older today). Microwaves supposedly proving the “Big Bang” are very, very uniform in every direction, indicating that the universe was very uniform at the moment it came into being, but the early universe has too much structure, too much complexity to have been formed by such an event, and today there are galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and super clusters.

As mentioned earlier, physicists have explained the forces other than gravity as being produced by emission and absorption of virtual particles. La Violette and others have pointed out a few problems with this assumption…and that’s what it is, since the theory has never been proven. Bear in mind that what follows is just La Violette’s interpretation; physicists supporting the conventional theory might express it differently and would certainly address the wave-particle duality that is essential to quantum mechanics. Particles appearing from nowhere would be a violation of the first law of thermodynamics, the law of conservation of mass-energy. If any inventor claims to have developed a “free energy” or over unity device, physicists will attack him for supposedly violating this sacrosanct law, but they themselves violate it here by asserting that the virtual particles exist for such a brief duration that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle allows it. In addition, according to La Violette, while common sense tells us laymen that if one particle (like a proton) emits “virtual” photons which strike another proton, that might explain repulsion, but not attraction. Physicists get around this by assuming that Newton’s law of conservation of momentum can also be violated for a very brief period, again calling upon Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This sounds very, very contrived. The cloud of virtual particles around, say, an electron or proton would, according to La Violette, have an infinite mass, but conventional physicists counter this by asserting that protons and other “real” particles have an immense “negative mass” which neutralizes most of this.

Physicists believe that all of the Sun’s internal heat is produced by a hydrogen fusion reaction, which should emit particles called “neutrinos.” When they learned how to detect the neutrinos, they were shocked to find only a third as many as expected. So they assumed that there must be more than one kind of neutrino and they were only detecting one kind, rather than suspecting that only part of the Sun’s energy is produced by fusion and the remainder by an unknown source. Meanwhile, the internal heat of planets and moons is explained as residual heat from their formation, heat caused by slow gravitational compression, the decay of radioisotopes, and, in the case of some of the moons (like Jupiter’s moon Io) tidal flexing. The problem is that all of these sources together do not come close to accounting for all the internal heat of the planets, particularly the gas giants of the outer Solar System. If either all of space was filled by a dynamic ether that functions as an inexhaustible energy source, or if (per sub quantum kinetics) energy can spontaneously arise from concentrations of mass with no matter being destroyed, both the internal heat of the planets and the mystery of the missing neutrinos could be explained at once. But that would require going back to the very beginning of modern physics and starting over, and most physicists would prefer to continue tweaking the current theories in what, to some of us, appears to be an exercise in futility.

Then there is the problem of the magnetic fields of planets and stars. Geophysicists tell us that the Earth’s magnetic field is generated by electrical currents flowing in the molten nickel and iron core. The currents are supposedly generated by the conductive core rotating in the magnetic field, like a huge generator. You heard that right…the currents cause the field and the field generates the current. We laymen are left wondering how it got started. But there’s more. The Earth’s magnetic field is offset from the axis of rotation; the magnetic poles are not exactly 180 degrees apart; and they wander slowly about. As if that wasn’t bad enough, periodically the field weakens, dies out, and then reestablishes itself with the poles reversed. No one has any explanation for any of this. And if the Earth’s field is caused by currents in its nickel and iron core, why does the Sun, with a core of hydrogen plasma, have a powerful field? And what of Jupiter and the other outer planets? Jupiter presumably has a small nickel and iron core surrounded by silicates and other minerals, but almost all of its interior is believed to be composed of metallic hydrogen, which is hydrogen solidified, despite Jupiter’s great internal heat, by the immense pressure. Yet Jupiter’s magnetic field is far stronger than Earth’s. And what of neutron stars, composed of collapsed matter, that have incredibly powerful fields? Rather than inventing a different explanation for the magnetism of all of these very different objects, wouldn’t it be much more logical to look for some common cause? Note that there is a rough correlation between angular momentum and field strength, as in the case of massive, rapidly rotating Jupiter. Perhaps whatever causes much of the internal heat of large objects like planets and stars also somehow generates their magnetic fields.

If a theory seems to explain things reasonable well, it is not dishonest or irrational for scientists to be unwilling to abandon it. But the evidence against the current paradigm is massive and growing. We can speculate that a favored few know perfectly well what the truth is, and that the government actually has spacecraft using gravity control, and/or that they are denying us the benefits of “free” energy technologies. After all, the USAF was investigating Townsend Brown’s electrogravitic lifters as far back as the nineteen fifties. Or the nature of the ether may transcend the physical and undermine the elites’ insistence that we believe in philosophical materialism. Or…and this is certainly true for most researchers and university teachers…people may be unwilling to admit that they have been mistaken. Reputations and lucrative careers are at stake, like the good paying jobs of the “hot” fusion researchers, who have accomplished precisely nothing in two generations. We laymen may not know why the powers that be continue to cling to relativity and quantum mechanics, and we are not qualified to propose alternative theories. But we are smart enough to know that something needs to change.